CEV President André Meyer opens the Management Seminar hosted through Saturday and Sunday by the European Volleyball Confederation

Luxembourg, May 3, 2013 – “I would like to extend a very warm welcome to all of you as we get together for a seminar that is supposed to leave a unique mark on our mutual cooperation for the good of volleyball and beach volleyball,” CEV President André Meyer said on Friday afternoon to officially open the Management Seminar promoted by CEV with Presidents and General Secretaries representing a total of 41 out of its 55 member federations being in attendance.

“As you all know, volleyball is primarily a team sport and this seminar has been conceived exactly with this frame of mind. As we all work for the same goal, we need to join our forces, but before embarking on any action, we shall first take a moment to come together, discuss and share ideas” he continued.
With this in mind CEV has turned to a Swiss-based company, TSE Consulting, which is known for its ability to deliver strategies generating success in order to help the national federations improve the management of their organization and especially take up the various challenges they are daily confronted by.

Lars Haue-Pedersen, Managing Director of TSE Consulting, followed up on the opening speech delivered by the CEV President by recalling the main goals of the Management Seminar and also the experience that his company has accumulated in most of the Olympic sports in Europe as well as overseas. “One of the things we found out is that sport is a people business” he said. “Because of its nature, in sport people get good ideas when they are together and this seminar can be very good quality time and I hope you will be going home with a couple of good ideas” he said. “We need to look for big things and that’s why the main topic of this seminar will be the breakthrough, which means we want to help you discover something that can contribute a big improvement to the work of your federation” he added.

Sports management? What’s that for a business? That’s the very first question Mr. Haue-Pedersen submitted to the audience. “Sports organizations are not just something in between corporate businesses and NGOs. This is not enough as a definition as national federations aren’t driven nor by profit neither by purpose. Sport is a very complex world and it is not driven exclusively by purpose as NGOs like the Red Cross or Amnesty International. Once they have accomplished their mission, they should – potentially – no longer exist. On the other hand, sport is a very special kind of business and will never disappear”.

The seminar touched upon four methods to improve on the quality of the daily management of national federations and to achieve a disproportional internal breakthrough: 1) strategy which means think about how to get better results with the same or even with less resources, how to get ideas people did not come up with yet so that federations inspire each other; 2) change: what can people do differently to be able to deliver different – and better – results recognizing that there is not a one-size-fits-all strategy and that each federation is different; 3) measurements: federations need to find a way to measure their performance as accurately as possible; 4) service: federations have to see their members as customers, be service-oriented rather than institutional bodies whose task is purely to govern the sport by applying a series of rules.

Hanna Iiskola-Kesonen, who has been the General Secretary of the Finnish Volleyball Association for the past four years, summing up her feelings at the end of Friday’s session says: “I really enjoyed every single moment of this seminar and I deem it very useful. It does fit to my way of thinking and I will bring back home a lot of information, especially when it comes to the way sports organizations have been discussed in their comparison with NGOs and corporate businesses”.

The seminar will continue through Saturday all day long before the attendees join the gala coming up in the evening at Neumünster Abbey to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of CEV.